


Wake Me

by Asphyxiate



Category: Free!
Genre: Drowning, Fear, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asphyxiate/pseuds/Asphyxiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Makoharu drabbles; my take on Makoto's fear of the ocean. Haruka is most always there to comfort him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wake Me

a trigger, they called it  
the expanse of thoughtless letters doesn’t explain to makoto why he has the nightmares  
why he freezes up in biology class because of dead minnows in a tank, starting to shake as he watches the bodies float up to the surface. the glass shatters in his mind’s eye.  
he reads the psych report with frantic eyes and rips it in two  
looking, desperate, around the room for somewhere to hide himself from his parents, his friends, the world  
that night he’s in the boat again  
there’s the awful splinter of wood on rock,  
the jarring screams of brave men near death.  
makoto is swallowed by the water, it laughs jeeringly at him. “waste not, want not” it says, as if he is trash that bobs helplessly in its grip like the minnows, drained of all life  
he can’t move as he watches one victim after another tossed off the ship into the water  
and then worst of all is his friend  
fighting the current, eyes seeming to scream “save me” as he is torn to pieces in the ocean that holds makoto safe and sound  
he tries to scream, swim towards his friend, but he is no longer free  
at last a guttural yell passes his lips before his lungs fill with that soulless black water and his eyes snap open to his bedroom, all shadows and long lines in the dim light.


	2. Nightmare

the very same dream haunted him every night  
he was no longer makoto tachibana, he was the ocean  
he was the night, the storm, the relentlessness of the pounding waves and the choking fear of the fisherman and his boat  
he was frozen in place as the shadows of mute funeralgoers painted streaks of gray across his vision; frozen in place as the wild water filled his nose and mouth  
there was something in that water, he thought as he woke with a scream,  
something indefinitely and frighteningly uncharted  
something that swallowed, something that seeped  
something that killed  
he couldn’t stop the frantic beating of his heart  
ragged breaths escaping from parted lips as he then recalled rei’s rescue  
limbs beginning to stiffen, fighting against the tide as dead goldfish and dead men flickered in his mind’s eye— the broken ship’s hull, his fisherman friend unnaturally still  
water trickling from everywhere  
water rushing into his lungs  
the thing he had once loved the most becoming his greatest enemy  
and then the arms that had pulled him from the water were there once more,   
haruka’s concerned face looming above as he shouted things that makoto couldn’t hear  
he wanted so much to break into a reassuring smile, move away, pretend he was fine  
but his face remained as if stunned still in a mask of fear, mouth open in a silent scream  
why won’t it stop  
words came through, and then phrases, sentences, makoto’s ears opened finally to a sea of querulous and interrogatory statements  
“makoto, what’s happening”  
“are you all right, makoto?”  
“talk to me, please”  
and makoto answered with a flood of tears, surging up against haruka as if he were the only real thing in the world.   
“i’m fine.” and he was fine then  
he was fine with haru kissing him  
he was fine sleeping with their fingers intertwined  
he was fine with knowing that haru would always be there, he was there before and he was there now and he would be there forever


	3. Bound

it’s not so easy to laugh in the face of death  
force a smile as you watch the body tremble and jerk, blood pours from all arteries and vital organs spill out of the empty cavity into the water  
the words ‘childhood trauma’ come to mind and makoto shoves them back behind closed doors  
he is far too polite to scream or fall, cowering, to the floor when someone mentions another ocean death  
another body floating lifelessly as it loses all face and name to something wild and unattainable, entrails snaking behind like a twisted flag of surrender  
no, he doesn’t want to see a psychiatrist when he wakes up from those nightmares  
those frozen silences don’t mean he needs help  
instead his smile is set in stone, the call for help on the other end becoming weaker and weaker until it is cut off by the sound of makoto withering into himself  
it’s always the quiet ones who are the most empty— haruka knows that from experience so it’s only natural he apprehends makoto miles before the end  
we laugh, we cry, we live, we grow. a mantra he will repeat between kisses  
the forehead, the chest, the hand, the lips  
he respects him because everyone stands, leans, falls  
he loves him because everyone had and then lost  
and if it’s his body floating in the ocean, eyes snapped open and glazed over, makoto will laugh, cry, live, grow  
someday he will catch on the wind like a burning feather and write haruka’s name in smoke and bone on all the airplanes and redwood trees   
someday he will stand before the ocean and laugh in the face of death.


	4. Chapter 4

a heart stops beating  
that’s all there is to it  
the cold and precise science of death doesn’t allow for the lover screaming, restrained by many clammy hands as he rips out his larynx with a howl of pain loss rage at the world and the doctors who couldn’t save him  
doesn’t account for the first time they held hands in public,   
all the times he was nursed back to health, or kissed until he found other things better than oxygen  
five hundred joules charging clear wasn’t enough to bring him back  
five hundred years wasn’t enough to erase all memory of the soundless wordless death  
not even time for one goodbye  
see you later, later or never  
a cold and precise account of haruka nanase’s death was ripped to shreds in his burning hands


End file.
